The Conservative Party of Quebec (PCQ) is not, strictly speaking, a new party. In the modern era, it was founded in 2009 and fielded its first candidates in the 2012 election. But it never managed to get more than 1.5% of the vote.
Posted at 6:00 a.m.
Along comes Éric Duhaime and, very quickly, the party finds itself with more than 10% of the vote in the polls — and in the Marie-Victorin by-election. He was granted a seat in the leaders’ debates and suddenly he was no longer relegated to the ranks of marginal parties such as the Green Party, the NDP-Quebec or the Marxist-Leninists.
Obviously, it is not the mere arrival of Mr. Duhaime at the head of the party – talented as he is – that could have changed the situation to this point. It is also and above all the fact that the party has become the political vehicle of those who opposed the most restrictive health measures such as wearing a mask or the obligation of a vaccination passport.
It is therefore not surprising that the PCQ is more popular in the Quebec region, where these measures were least popular and were constantly denounced by local radio stations.
Even if the pandemic has not completely disappeared from the scene – and could always come back to life – it remains unlikely that it will require the imposition of a new confinement or very restrictive measures.
However, when we read the conservative platform, we still give a lot of space to the pandemic. For example, we demand strict control of the state of health emergency, which could only be extended by a vote of 80% of the deputies.
“During the health crisis, Quebecers were dispossessed of their civil rights and their individual freedoms… Never again should such a liberticidal and authoritarian drift occur in Quebec”, warns the conservative platform in the tone that we normally reserve for military dictatorships.
“We must get rid of those who have trampled on our rights and freedoms,” repeated Mr. Duhaime on Sunday, in front of a large crowd for his campaign launch.
It is not for nothing that the Conservative leader wants to keep the sad memories of the pandemic alive. This is because, on the other subjects, the conservative platform is ultimately quite banal and, above all, without many innovative ideas.
It includes many measures proposed, then abandoned, by other parties over the past two decades and which have rarely aged well.
Thus, the idea once again emerges of increasing the place of private health care — including the right to subscribe to a private insurance plan even for care covered by the public plan. It’s hard to get more “two-speed” than that, but it’s anything but a new idea.
The same is true for daycares, where we take up the idea of a $200 per week voucher sent directly to parents, “who will then be able to choose the type of daycare that suits them best for their child”. At one time, it was Mario Dumont’s Democratic Action program.
As for transportation and the environment, nothing new: for the third link, against the Quebec tramway. Make public transit by bus free — but only in the Quebec region — and abolish the carbon tax.
If you are worried about global warming, know that it is for nothing, since “adapting to change will always be possible, even more tomorrow than today”. In short, why worry since future scientific discoveries will do the job.
And very little – in fact nothing at all – in this conservative platform on identity and language issues and on the controversial laws 21 and 96 which have nevertheless been so present in the political debate of recent years. This is probably because Mr. Duhaime’s positions may not be too popular.
For him, the use of the notwithstanding clause – or “notwithstanding” – makes these two laws contrary to fundamental freedoms, which is in phase with his libertarian ideology, but not so much with the nationalism which he claimed earlier in his career, both with the Bloc Québécois and the Action Démocratique du Québec.
Today, to find out what he thinks of these questions, you have to refer to his interviews, since the program simply does not deal with them.
The question that arises for the Conservative Party is whether there will still be an electorate for a platform that is essentially made up of old recipes and rehash?
Otherwise, we should expect Mr. Duhaime to try to exploit a memory of the pandemic which, unfortunately for him, is increasingly fading.
No one wants an eighth wave. But with such an uninnovative electoral platform, we understand that it could become a real lifeline for the Conservative Party of Quebec.